


in the dying light

by silentsonata



Series: nice but inaccurate oneshots [15]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Crowley cares too much, Heaven, Heaven's Propaganda Machine, Light Angst, M/M, Protective Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-14 22:50:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21023531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentsonata/pseuds/silentsonata
Summary: Not everyone can be set free from their chains.





	in the dying light

Snakes which hunt during the day tend have crystal-clear vision and excellent depth perception. Conversely, nocturnal snakes have terrible vision at best. Crowley belongs to the latter category. But he has never needed amazing vision to see that Aziraphale is shackled by divine chains, wholly unaware of his enslavement. He does not need 20/20 vision to see that Aziraphale is mechanically signing his eternity away to pointless martyrdom. Crowley can feel it, and it is a dissonant chord that disturbs the very essence of his soul.

The scary thing about it is that Aziraphale does not struggle.

Aziraphale always puts on a happy face, manages to smile in just the right way to both reassure and concern Crowley. His faith in Heaven is a tower that starts about halfway up and climbs infinitely skywards: there are no foundations and is, by that definition, unshakeable by even the strongest earthquake. Even if Crowley steps into the role of the Big Bad Wolf (which, mind you, he has done for quite a few centuries now), he has no way of huffing and puffing hard enough to blow the tower down. The bricks seem to be weighted with steadfastness, just as the glue between them seemed to be made of Aziraphale’s desire to do good.

Crowley’s own tower of faith is not so much a tower as a collection of bricks on the ground. He can still remember when they fell from the sky like toys cast away by a child that has outgrown them. His tower had been too tall to mitigate the damage caused by its collapse. It had been set aflame too, an impressive sight – Crowley was sure of that – both a beacon crying for help and a celebration of a new world without him. The bricks broke each other and the ground as they piled onto him, and he had emerged from the rubble, crushed, defeated, but not broken.

Crowley was born anew that day, was thrust again into the world screaming and thrashing and clawing desperately at his surroundings, both in defence and a frenzied bid for something to cling onto. It was the second time he had been born in his life.

In the centuries that ensue, just as a snake does, he is forced by the world to shed his skin again and again, shapeshifting to satisfy the mould around him in an endless cycle of rebirth. It is not a beautiful, phoenix-like process. Rather, it is a process that tears his demon-shaped shell apart from the inside out, an embryo smothered by egg whites of oil and nourished by rotten yolk. It is ugly and suffocating. The shell is harder to crack each time, and sometimes he wonders if he should give up and just resign himself to his fate.

But Crowley cannot afford to give up yet. Not when Aziraphale is not yet free. _Especially _not after both of them have endured for so long the empty words sung by heavenly choirs. Yet he cannot touch Aziraphale, for fear of burning them both with a Molotov cocktail filled with love and desire and purity and sin. Neither pain nor flames discriminate.

Aziraphale is attracted to the anglerfish that is Heaven, and Crowley can only sit beside him and silently offer an alternative. With each decade that passes by, Crowley sees him move closer to its gaping maw, and shudders at the propaganda machine that has found a voice through Aziraphale.

But he has known that the angel is different since he heard “I gave it away”. Crowley knows that Aziraphale’s blinkers are not properly secured, that sometimes he glimpses the light. There is hope for them yet. Crowley is willing to give away all the stars he had ever made to see Aziraphale safe from the strings of divine puppeteers. But Heaven does not care for his efforts or his stars.

All Heaven cares about is winning the war, and it will make anyone an enemy to do so.

**Author's Note:**

> this is for days 9 and 10 of whump-tober: shackled + unconscious (find [here](https://whumptober2019.tumblr.com/post/187356400823/october-approaches-and-so-does-whumptober-2019)) :D
> 
> [Find me on Tumblr!](https://silent--sonata.tumblr.com/)   
[Chat to me on Discord!](https://discord.gg/pTcajxx)   



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